Tuesday, August 23, 2011
Another case of rendition by U.S.?
From The Hindu
The Obama administration came under fire from both liberal and conservative quarters for its treatment of Ahmed Abdulkadir Warsame, a Somali man that it held prisoner on a United States naval vessel for two months and now proposes to try in a U.S. civilian court.
While liberals have raised serious questions about why Mr. Warsame was denied a lawyer and possibly not assured of the right to remain silent during questioning, Republicans asked why, similar to the case of the Guantanamo-Bay trials, the White House was considering ruling out military instead of civilian courts.
The capture, confinement and questioning of Mr. Warsame, who has been formally charged on nine counts relating to the alleged support he gave to and received from the al-Shabaab insurgent group in Somalia and al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula in Yemen, harkens back to the Bush-era “extraordinary renditions” controversy.
During that episode the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency was alleged to have captured and transported 3,000 people world over, since 2001. The European Union, especially, became embroiled in the controversy after a June 2006 report from the Council of Europe reportedly said that 100 people had been kidnapped within the EU and extra-judicially rendered to other nations, “often after having transited through secret detention centres called “black sites,” located in Europe.
This week the charges against Mr. Warsarme, who appeared in a Southern District of New York court on Tuesday and pleaded not guilty, included specific allegations of possessing, carrying, and using a firearm and destructive device, conspiracy to teach and demonstrate the making of explosives, receiving military-type training from a foreign terrorist organisation, and providing other material support to an FTO. Typically, such charges would attract a mandatory term of life in prison if convicted, reports said.
Yet senior Republican leaders criticised Mr. Obama’s treatment of Mr. Warsame for entirely different reasons with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell saying, “Warsame is a foreign enemy combatant... He should be treated as one; he should be sitting in a cell in Guantanamo Bay, and eventually be tried before a military commission.”
His comments reflected the continuing tensions around a top policy priority of the Obama government last year, to eventually shut down Guantanamo Bay prison and possibly try its inmates in civilian courts.
That plan was hastily shelved after a storm of protest against bringing the so-called “enemy combatants” into New York City for trial and subsequently the administration has entirely backed off from the goal of closing down the prison, contrary to an Obama campaign promise in 2008.
Lamar Alexander, Republican of Texas raised another point of obvious inconsistency in the Obama White House’s counter-terrorism strategy. He said, “The Obama administration won't detain terrorists at a military facility in Guantanamo Bay, but they have no problem with a naval ship off the coast of Africa. Their policy toward detainees lacks common sense.”
The Obama administration came under fire from both liberal and conservative quarters for its treatment of Ahmed Abdulkadir Warsame, a Somali man that it held prisoner on a United States naval vessel for two months and now proposes to try in a U.S. civilian court.
While liberals have raised serious questions about why Mr. Warsame was denied a lawyer and possibly not assured of the right to remain silent during questioning, Republicans asked why, similar to the case of the Guantanamo-Bay trials, the White House was considering ruling out military instead of civilian courts.
The capture, confinement and questioning of Mr. Warsame, who has been formally charged on nine counts relating to the alleged support he gave to and received from the al-Shabaab insurgent group in Somalia and al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula in Yemen, harkens back to the Bush-era “extraordinary renditions” controversy.
During that episode the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency was alleged to have captured and transported 3,000 people world over, since 2001. The European Union, especially, became embroiled in the controversy after a June 2006 report from the Council of Europe reportedly said that 100 people had been kidnapped within the EU and extra-judicially rendered to other nations, “often after having transited through secret detention centres called “black sites,” located in Europe.
This week the charges against Mr. Warsarme, who appeared in a Southern District of New York court on Tuesday and pleaded not guilty, included specific allegations of possessing, carrying, and using a firearm and destructive device, conspiracy to teach and demonstrate the making of explosives, receiving military-type training from a foreign terrorist organisation, and providing other material support to an FTO. Typically, such charges would attract a mandatory term of life in prison if convicted, reports said.
Yet senior Republican leaders criticised Mr. Obama’s treatment of Mr. Warsame for entirely different reasons with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell saying, “Warsame is a foreign enemy combatant... He should be treated as one; he should be sitting in a cell in Guantanamo Bay, and eventually be tried before a military commission.”
His comments reflected the continuing tensions around a top policy priority of the Obama government last year, to eventually shut down Guantanamo Bay prison and possibly try its inmates in civilian courts.
That plan was hastily shelved after a storm of protest against bringing the so-called “enemy combatants” into New York City for trial and subsequently the administration has entirely backed off from the goal of closing down the prison, contrary to an Obama campaign promise in 2008.
Lamar Alexander, Republican of Texas raised another point of obvious inconsistency in the Obama White House’s counter-terrorism strategy. He said, “The Obama administration won't detain terrorists at a military facility in Guantanamo Bay, but they have no problem with a naval ship off the coast of Africa. Their policy toward detainees lacks common sense.”
Labels: Ahmed Abdulkadir Warsame, U.S. counter-terrorism policies, War against terror
# posted by Narayan Lakshman @ 10:33 AM 
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